For my capstone, I created Cheer Foundations, a beginner-friendly website designed to teach the fundamentals of cheerleading through instructional videos. My project focused on making cheer more accessible, specifically to beginners, by providing clear, step-by-step lessons on motions, jumps, and tumbling, while highlighting safety in each lesson. Throughout the process, I researched proper cheer techniques and safety guidelines while also filming and editing my own instructional videos. I faced challenges during the project, including weather conditions while filming outdoors, and recovering from a pulled ligament in my ankle, but I reworked my schedule and continued working on other parts of the website. From this experience, I learned about time management, leadership, and the importance of clear communication in teaching, especially when teaching physical skills. My final product is a professional website that encourages beginners and people who are less fortunate to learn cheer safely, confidently, and at their own pace.

Textile arts stretch back thousands of years and are one of the oldest forms of storytelling modern people can still access. For my capstone, I wanted to visually capture a story of SLA’s community and what it has meant to me in shaping my high school experience through a quilted tapestry. Through this process, I also wanted to incorporate an issue that is very important to me, which is sustainability within arts spaces and the issues regarding the current pollution of the textile industry. For this reason, I completed my tapestry using only pre-owned or secondhand materials. In terms of the construction of my capstone, I used a multitude of fiber arts skills including sewing, quilting, looming, interfacing, embroidering, and beading. While I undertook this project with some basic experience, I was able to become a lot more confident both in refining the basics and developing new strategies to work around secondhand and recycled materials.

Bibliography https://docs.google.com/document/d/10KiYzqWOyAAsFDJSiDNy4ZW_lu_FHYkGmYEjd4-Qem8/edit?usp=sharing

For my Casptone, I painted the SLA core values on the stairwell. WHY? Well, I recently conducted a survey/interview with students at SLA from every grade, and I planned to get everyone’s opinions and quiz them about SLA. So I asked people if they knew the SLA core values, and I noticed everyone gave the same response: “I don’t know. “I’m not sure,” or them naming a couple, then give up. So I notice this is was a big problem because these values are what make our school what it is today, along with our community and it shapes our students’ lives here. Because of that, I wanted that to change while using art on my capstone, and so that’s how my project came about.

Throughout this process, I’ve been brainstorming about what I wanted to do, what the sketches of how I wanted it to be painted looked like, then tracing, executing, and bringing it to life. Throughout my process of making this happen, the biggest thing I learned was not to wait until the last minute. For instance, don’t start your capstone two months before it’s due. I say this because for me I thought my capstone wasn’t gonna take as long, but it was longer than I anticipated, so everything was kind of cramped in, and I would stay after school for 4 hours, then come home at 8 o’clock. Overall, what I learned was to manage my time better.

My SLA senior capstone project is a field guide to the shorebirds of the New Jersey shore. My guide, titled “Down the Shorebirds”, includes the 12 most common Sandpipers, Plovers, and Oystercatchers found on the shore with a focus on their conservation and threats to their populations. The goal in making this guide was to promote interest, in casual or fist time birdwatchers, in conservation and bring awareness to the imminent threat faced by coastline dependent species. My book will be distributed in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Birding Backpacks as well as at SLA and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Throughout the project I learned not only about the birds I was studying but also how to pace myself when writing a research heavy, and relatively long, piece of writing.

Down the Shorebirds Field Guide

For my Capstone project, I decided to create a webcomic that aims to explain my time in SLA via art and writing about it. I wanted to be able to create something that was shown by art but had struggled to find a way to express it, originally by a mural, making drawings that would be in place of the mural, and then the final product of the Webcomic. A lot of it took time, it was pretty tedious in figuring out how to make the pages, and what to really say as it was being created. I found it somewhat difficult to find the time to handle it alongside the obvious assignments and other challenges of school, where eventually things began to piece together. I made this to not only explain the process of high school for me and how despite its difficulties it wasn’t as bad, but also as a thanks to all the SLA staff who have supported and helped me get through high school and to my eventual graduation. I wanted to show my gratitude and appreciation of SLA in the form of this webcomic, and to also tell other students either starting high school at SLA, or approaching graduation and becoming seniors that there may be a lot of difficulties, but the staff here truly do want to do what they can to help you succeed and get through it all. I hope that this final webcomic aims to help people out and to at least tell people that the high school process isn’t gonna be as bad, especially going to a school like SLA.

link to the webcomic!

bibliography

For my Capstone, I interviewed Artists in Philly, asking about their careers and lives as artists. As an artist myself and someone hoping to pursue a career in the arts itś incredibly helpful to see how others operate in the art world. During my interviews, I took pictures of them. Some were just casual photos I took wherever we were. For example, for one, I met her in her house, so I took pictures of her with all the fabric she uses in her work. This created a very relaxed and personable project that doesn’t feel too unrealistic to obtain, something that other artists can look at and find relatability in. I tried to ask questions that would allow my interviewers to reflect on their own lives and why they’re passionate about what they do. Each interview is a tiny glimpse into their characters, and I hope I was able to capture each of their personalities. I think as artists it can be easy to not be taken seriously, it surprised me how every one of my interviewers had never been interviewed before. I felt this sense of responsibility that I had to be a space where they felt comfortable enough to open up about their lives. I think I accomplished this because leaving each interview, I felt that I had gained a connection worthwhile. Although I tried to keep it professional, I was able to connect with each of them and used them almost like a mentor for me.

Website: https://www.wevideo.com/view/4096604640

Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iEDEdwTX1_tyGDAg0-GOHiRFlMwyLwN3L0uMdYftn6A/edit?usp=sharing

For my Capstone, I made 3 pieces of clothing using recycled fabric and garments that I no longer wear. My project revolved around sewing a unique t-shirt, hoodie, and sweatpants using the skills I learned along this process. In this day and age, it has become too common for people to discard clothes they don’t like or that have sustained minor damage. This project inspired me to reduce my overall clothing consumerism, while also teaching myself about sustainability through learning how to sew and mend. I want to promote using your old clothes to make new ones, and/or mending previously discarded clothes instead of repurchasing the same items brand-new.

Link to Clothing Gallery (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KHfF21Mbj8vg9y33y_hpSUzF2W6eFa5S?usp=drive_link)

Link to Annotated Bibliography (https://docs.google.com/document/d/12WYa9nvNcsZaplGOnO0IO84oz_VFgc-OaerKtn89_Yg/edit?usp=sharing)

Artifact:

For my senior capstone project I made a nutrition website filled with basic information for high school students, specifically SLA students. Social media is a vessel for misinformation and scientific facts alike. As high schoolers, whose minds and bodies are easily affected by the media, it is hard to distinguish what is right and wrong. I chose this project because I wanted to help debunk misconceptions about teenage nutrition. My inquiry question was “How can I utilize technology as a public artifact to effectively and realistically influence teens in Philly to make better food options for their own health?” I chose this question as the basis of my project because of how technology affects all teenagers in the United States. I believe that health is not, but should be, a prioritized curriculum. Knowledge about how to fuel your body is absolutely essential, especially to high school students: the age group where children are the most impressionable. Technology is a tool used to create publicly accessible artifacts that will stay online forever. All kids have some form of technology where the internet is used whether that be district-issued chromebooks, personal laptops, phones, or iPads. My website would reach all of these devices which means information about health that students might lack could be at their fingertips in a matter of seconds.

Website: https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/emrapak-seniorcapstone/home?authuser=0

Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fyBF9byeA_84UWGv-GFloDYXlciC09wzKDMgwaA0zU/edit?tab=t.0

For my Capstone Project, I collaborated with my partner, Ada, to transform the 4th-floor study room at SLA through a large-scale mural and an educational website. What began as a simple desire to leave a visual mark on our school evolved into a deep dive into Philadelphia’s environmental issues. Our project features a mural of the Philadelphia skyline integrated with the complete ecosystem of our local watershed, highlighting the fish and aquatic life that depend on clean city water. To ensure our project met the expectations for a duo-capstone, I also developed a website that provides data, history, and calls to action regarding watershed issues in our region. I chose this project because art has always been a primary way of communicating ideas, but I wanted my final act as sla to be more than just aesthetically pleasing. I wanted to create something permanent that improved the daily environment for my peers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rq0bVzSVZKN7gHQU4KIPJ0Gh6Xo6T7J6P7ypi0e4OkQ/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HibWDnhOK_vEG6X8hXsxNr4vPQnrmuE2SAl0gOBaNMo/edit?usp=sharing

For my senior capstone, I explored how digital platforms can reshape community engagement and accessibility within religious institutions by designing a website concept for my local mosque. The project focused on addressing communication issues caused by disoriented platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook, where important information was often missed or inaccessible to certain members of the community. Through surveys, interviews, research, and technical development, I designed a mobile-first website featuring dynamic prayer times, bilingual English and Bangla support, event calendars, and accessibility-focused navigation for older users and non-technical community members. Throughout the process, I researched responsive web design, accessibility standards, API integration, and user experience design while working closely with mosque leadership, community members, and my mentor. Although the mosque ultimately chose to move in a different direction for officially launching the website, the project still became a meaningful learning experience that strengthened my technical abilities, problem-solving skills, and understanding of community-centered design. More importantly, this capstone taught me that successful technology is not only about functionality, but about designing systems that respect culture, improve accessibility, and strengthen human connection.

Link to Website: https://novaimpact.github.io/baitulmukkaram/

Link to Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14q04aTi1bmJSOD73XGpmrbNY0Hsimz2qR5oxwYfVgNM/edit?usp=sharing